My first reknot: Vulfix 2234h with TGN Finest

A good friend of mine is a great fan of the Vulfix boar brushes, and told me good things about those brushes. I already had my Vulfix Grosvenor mixed in boar&badger, and liked it a lot, but I’ve not tried an 100% boar from Vulfix yet… Being myself a boar brush adept, I ended up buying a Vulfix 2234h in boar at Connaugtshaving. I was very curious about this brush, and I always thought that the faux-horn handle was gorgeous, and very different from the more common “faux ivory” Vulfix line-up.

Well, the boar knot was somewhat disappointing to me. I’m used to the backbone and density offered by the Omega and Semogue boar brushes, and this Vulfix boar was quite the opposite – it was floppy and with no density. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it was a bad brush – it surely had some virtues (it was extremely easy to break-in and it definitely wasn’t a lather hog), but it just wasn’t my taste.

So, I decided to take its knot out and reknot it with a badger knot from TGN. I seemed to me a good way to reuse this beautiful faux-horn handle – in my opinion, maybe one of the prettiest handles in the Simfix universe.

I was hesitating between two options: Finest and Silvertip Grade A. I wanted a knot with soft tips and a nice amount of backbone. I ended up ordering the Finest XH knot, which seemed to have the characteristics that I like - and aesthetically, I thought that would fit nicely in this handle.

Last photos of the brush before it was thrown into a boiling cauldron and beheaded.
Any last words?!?

At a thread in the Spanish forum foroafeitado, I’ve read about the technique used by Teiste to remove the knot, however my Spanish language skills are not very good and I didn’t understood it very well… so I just threw the brush into a puck of boiling water for about 5-10 minutes. When I took the brush out of the boiling water, the knot came out very easily, and there’s the result:

In the following photo, you can see that a great quantity of epoxy remained in the interior of the handle – I removed all pieces of epoxy with a “dremel-like” rotary tool.

The result was a handle with an enormous hole – at the end, I filled all the empty space with the new epoxy.

Another problem: this handle had a diameter of 20mm. Well, I wanted to reknot it with a 22mm knot – that means that the hole had to be enlarged with the rotary tool, in order for it to accommodate that new knot. Here’s a photo after the work was finished, and the accessories used:

I used the polishing accessory to erase the “Pure Bristle” words out of the handle and to polish it a little as well – that was needed because my “noob” experience (or lack of it – it’s my first reknot!) caused some scratches in the handle, in the zone near the knot, and a little one near the Vulfix logo… The other accessories were used to drill through the old epoxy and remove it, and to enlarge the hole.

At last, the knot arrived: a 22mm TGN Finest Badger XH. I chose a bulb shape knot because it was very different from the other brushes I have, and because I thought that it would look nice in this “curvy” handle.
The knot only took 5 days to arrive from Arizona to Portugal. Excellent service by TGN!

Some small final adjustments in the diameter of the handle were made. Then, all of the empty space was filled with epoxy and the knot was glued to the handle, set at a 51mm loft. Here’s a photo of the final result:

After the drying time, it was washed for the first time, and I used Arko to do some test lathers. Immediately the brush started to reveal its beautiful “curvy” silhouette:

I must say that I am very pleased with this knot. I've read that the tips were soft, but I didn’t expected that they were so soft – it turn out to be a very pleasant surprise.

Final characteristics:
- Resin handle from Vulfix 2234h (faux horn)
- 22mm TGN Finest Badger XH (bulb shape) knot
- loft: 51mm

A photographic comparison with one of the brushes that I used as an inspiration: the Simfix Grosvenor Super Badger 2-band – a very different type of brush, which pleases me as well. Another inspiration was the Semogue prototype that Teiste shows here.

Hope that you liked reading this! Suggestions and comments are welcome, as always!

nice looking brush, Emanuel.

Teiste posted a shaving brush restoration thread here on the forums in English:
http://shavenook.com/thread-shaving-brus...storations

(04-03-2012, 02:31 AM)andrewjs18 Wrote: nice looking brush, Emanuel.

Teiste posted a shaving brush restoration thread here on the forums in English:
http://shavenook.com/thread-shaving-brus...storations

Thank you for your words, Andrew!
And yes, I've seen that, it's a great guide, but unfortunately Teiste wrote that only shortly after I reknotted this one!

(04-03-2012, 02:35 AM)oversaturn Wrote:

(04-03-2012, 02:31 AM)andrewjs18 Wrote: nice looking brush, Emanuel.

Teiste posted a shaving brush restoration thread here on the forums in English:
http://shavenook.com/thread-shaving-brus...storations

Thank you for your words, Andrew!
And yes, I've seen that, it's a great guide, but unfortunately Teiste wrote that only shortly after I reknotted this one!

you should of poked Teiste with a fork sooner to get him to post that great guide here.

A fine looking retrofit, I have this brush and do find the handle is one of my favorites. The bristle knot is fine and to my liking.

Very nicely done Emanuel.

Very! nice Emanuel

You already know how jelous I am since I really like that handle.Captain Flint told you to get a great boar brush with a great handle,with that finest knot looks even GORGEOUS!
So,you just throw the brush into boiling water for less than 10 minutes,or 5 minutes?Gosh,the lettering survived the hot water,even the handle,so that means that they are really well build.
I have a 404 boar/badger coming my way and I think Its following the same path than yours and became an imitation of the BullGoose SIMFIX (like yours) that I had long time ago and sold (my mistake).
Great pics and great tutorial.Five stars,my good friend!

Thank you for your words, gentlemen!

(04-03-2012, 07:52 AM)Teiste Wrote: You already know how jelous I am since I really like that handle.Captain Flint told you to get a great boar brush with a great handle,with that finest knot looks even GORGEOUS!
So,you just throw the brush into boiling water for less than 10 minutes,or 5 minutes?Gosh,the lettering survived the hot water,even the handle,so that means that they are really well build.
I have a 404 boar/badger coming my way and I think Its following the same path than yours and became an imitation of the BullGoose SIMFIX (like yours) that I had long time ago and sold (my mistake).
Great pics and great tutorial.Five stars,my good friend!

Yes, it was something like between 5 and 10 minutes - the lettering and logo survived perfectly, as well as the handle. No trouble with the polishing or whatsoever. This is a tough material indeed, very well built.

Besides the Simfix, I also have the mixed Grosvenor - that is another outstanding handle, even heavier and better balanced than this one. But for now, I will leave the mixed one as it is, because I like it that way.

The Finest XH from TGN is a favorite of mine - great backbone to it. I had never heard of boiling the knot out. If you had any idea how much time I have spent DRILLING out the old knots of brushes... whewww! Now I know better!

Believe me, it works.
The glue that exists between the handle and the knot gets softer with high temperatures, hence it is easier to remove the knot.

You can also use the "steam" method used by Teiste here, it works equally well.

Very Good Job! I know how difficult it is to ream out a hole with a Dremel or similar tool, so your work in that respect is impressive. (By contrast, I would have probably mounted the handle on a lathe and used a 22mm Forstner bit to enlarge the hole, but that requires specialized equipment that most folks admittedly don't have.) So my hat's off to you.

Wonderful, Did u dig a deeper hole in the handle ?

Hi,

A little deeper and larger, in order to accommodate the 22mm knot.

 Very Good

Very nicely done and a good knot choice!!

Enjoy!!

Thank you for your kind words, gentleman!
Still an excellent brush, even now, after 4 years!